


The Story of Us

by babybirdi



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Crown of Midnight, Future, Gen, Heir of Fire, Maybe Spoilers, Queen Of Shadows, Throne of Glass, after the series, just a warning, rowaelin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 22:28:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4763372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybirdi/pseuds/babybirdi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's been gone for years, and she doesn't know if he'll ever return to her in this life. Their daughter is nearly of age, and it's long past time for Aelin to tell her the story of who her father was and everything he'd done to help the queen of Terrasen become who she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Story of Us

Little Eva looked up at her mother, of whom she was nearly a spitting image. Except instead of the turquoise ringed with gold, her eyes were the pine green of her father's, and the gold glittered at dozens of points in each of them.

"Can you tell me about him?" her still-small voice asked.

 _Can_ you, not _will_ you. Queen Aelin Galathynius Whitethorn of Terrasen would, if she could. But it hurt, still. Even now, when little Eva wasn't so little anymore. As she asked while they stood quietly in the tower at Orynth, watching the sun set on another year since he'd been gone.

Deep down in her heart, she harbored that small flicker of hope that he was still out there, somewhere. That one day he'd return to them. Return to her. But the chance that he wouldn't was so close to assured, and it pained her. Because, deep down, there was an emptiness that had started a few years after he had gone that she hadn't felt since the discovery that they were _carranam._

Eva had been without her father for nearly a decade, and he'd missed so much of her life. She was nearly a woman now, and before another decade went by her aging would slow, then stop all together.

It was the one thing Aelin hadn't dared to hope for her daughter, that she might have the thing Aelin didn't think she herself possessed, at least not completely. Even now, she looked to be in her mid-twenties, though in reality she'd been on this earth nearly four decades. She'd kept aging, and could feel it in her bones, but it took so much longer.

And that was why he had gone. To find a way for her to stay with him forever, not just an extended amount of time.

She should have made him wait. Wait until Eva was old enough that she could handle running Terrasen while her parents went in search of this impossible thing together. Because that's how they'd always done things - together.

_To whatever end._

But he'd insisted. They'd argued for weeks over it, and at last she relented.

Eva hadn't asked that question in a long time. Even before she asked it now, Aelin was gathering every memory, pushing aside the pain and heartbreak at the absence of her _carranam_ so she could tell her daughter - _their_ daughter - what she'd wanted to know for so long.

They stood on the balcony of the tower in Orynth, looking towards the western horizon, where the Staghorns reached up to touch the sky. There were a few hours left before the sun would set on the anniversary of the day that he had set out.

"I'm going to tell you a story," Aelin said softly, and her daughter turned to her with those eyes that sparkled so much like her father's. "No one in the world knows it in its entirety. But it's ours. And it's long past time for me to tell it."

Eva knew what this was, without her mother outright saying so. This was the one she had longed to hear, everyday since she was old enough to realize that he might not come back.

"Once upon a time," Aelin said, exhaling to try and calm herself. "Once upon a time, there was a girl who had given up on herself, and a Fae prince who would help to bring her back from the edge of darkness..."


End file.
